MINIMISING DOWNTIME

HOW IOT IS TRANSFORMING THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES BY IMPROVING PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

- SYED AMEEN KADER

WHILE THE BENEFITS OF DIGITAL technologies are immense, it is in the area of predictive maintenance that manufacturers can derive the significant impact.

With the use of sensors and data analysis, companies can spot patterns in equipment condition and performance – an important knowledge that helps accurately predict when a failure might occur. Manufacturers understand how important such foresight is as it eliminates unplanned downtime, delivering substantial productivity benefits.

“Failures and downtime happen regularly in perhaps every kind of manufacturing environment. Everyone on the shop floor or the top floor understands how exasperating a machine breakdown can be,” says Sacheen Patil, Vice President & Global Head - IoT & Embedded Practice CoE at YASH Technologies.

Citing industry studies, he points out that unplanned downtime costs manufacturers an estimated $50 billion.

“So It is vital to access machine data to predict potential failures of specific machines or whole manufacturing lines. Any unexpected failure causes significant production losses, which can be overcome by monitoring real-time machine data and proactively scheduling maintenance activities,” says Patil, adding that this would also prevent the machine's life from deteriorating.

He says many manufacturers are implementing solutions via IoT (Internet of things) with data from various sensors coming onto the remote monitoring platform for analysis. “This is then used to make maintenance decisions (and actions), preventing machine failure.”